&
Present
Anxious
Attachment
Tyler may just be having the best day of his life.
His brother Patrick would like a word.
Three Productions 2026
&
Present
Tyler may just be having the best day of his life.
His brother Patrick would like a word.
Anxious Attachment is a drama about two brothers, Tyler and Patrick, navigating a moment of quiet crisis — one that surfaces the ways technology, dependency, and family can converge in unexpected ways. Tyler has found something that makes him feel whole. Patrick isn’t sure it’s real. In twenty minutes, the play asks what we owe each other, and what it means to be present for someone who doesn’t want you there.
Inspired by real reporting on AI companion applications and their psychological effects, Anxious Attachment began as a provocation — what does it look like when attachment hacking meets a family that’s already fractured? — and became something more personal in the writing.
Both plays that became Something Anxious were written and produced in 50 hours at ZJU’s Drive-By Theatre Festival. Props assigned by lottery. No rehearsals. Anxious Attachment emerged from that pressure — a play about connection in an age that commodifies it, written at speed, performed raw.
Anxious Attachment made its world premiere at the Bombay Beach Biennale — a contemporary arts festival held in one of California’s most isolated and atmospheric locations. Performing on the edge of the Salton Sea, the play found its voice in front of an audience that came prepared for the unexpected.
Anxious Attachment opens the Hollywood Fringe double feature Something Anxious, paired with Michael Silva’s Something Ancient. Seven performances. One hour. The Fringe production marks the play’s full realization — new cast, new staging, same essential question: what do we owe each other?
Douglas Clarke is a writer, director, and producer working in Los Angeles. Anxious Attachment is his debut as a playwright. He is also the producer of Something Anxious and the founder of Razorwire Productions.
He can be reached at Douglas@SoulmateOfficial.com.